BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said companies needed to plan for energy prices and raw materials to remain high by being more efficient in their production and stepping up recycling efforts to keep costs down.

"We have a peak now, they might not stay at the peak, but they will not go back to former prices," Zipse said at a roundtable in New York on Thursday.

"How much energy you need and use, and circularity, is important - for environmental reasons but even more for economic reasons."